America's Finest Blog: 1-30-2010

THEY PROTESTED OVER UC FEE HIKES THEY DON'T HAVE TO PAY

The more I looked into the outrage over San Diego State University limiting enrollment guarantees for local students, the more bogus the protests appeared. Locals who couldn’t get in due to the change still were guaranteed transfer admission if they got a two-year degree from an area community college and had decent grades. The people who whined about the SDSU change should be ashamed.

Now I learn this holds for nearly all the students who went bonkers over recent University of California tuition hikes. This is from a UC Web site report on the regents’ decision:

“Regents also endorsed an expansion of the Blue and Gold Opportunity Plan. Students with household incomes of $70,000 and lower will have all their systemwide fees covered if they are eligible for financial aid.

So nearly all the protesters who whined themselves hoarse over this AREN’T AFFECTED BY IT!

Isn’t this, yunno, news? Why wasn’t this in the fourth paragraph of every story about protests?

I don’t get it.

BENEDICT ARNOLD: GOV MAY BACK JERRY BROWN

Maureen Dowd’s recent New York Times column about her interview with Arnold Schwarzenegger detailed the gov’s “admiration for Jerry Brown.” It strongly implied Arnold would rather have California’s eccentric chameleon Democrat attorney general succeed him than Republican fiscal conservatives Steve Poizner or Meg Whitman.

Now maybe this makes sense because Poizner and Whitman are so critical of Arnold. And maybe it’s not a big deal because Arnold is so unpopular that his endorsement would hurt its recipient.

But it is still a gross betrayal of those who voted for him in 2003 and 2006 because of his self-depiction as a small-government, pro-business, low-tax true believer. Jerry Brown’s iterations may vary, but they don’t include being a small-government, pro-business, low-tax true believer.

Schwarzenegger is the 21st-century version of Benedict Arnold.

JERRY'S DEFINITION OF ‘SOCIAL JUSTICE’: WHAT GETS HIM ELECTED

More on Jerry Brown: It’s now been a month since I asked him whether California should adopt a government-run single-payer health care system. Much less radical changes to health care now appear dead in Congress, thankfully, but a single-payer bill was just approved by the state Senate.

The only reason such a bill isn’t law in California is because Arnold has vetoed it twice, so there could hardly be more important a question to ask the guy who’s the front-runner to succeed Arnold.

Remember, he ran for attorney general in 2006 as a noble do-gooder who wouldn’t continue Bill Lockyer’s tawdry tradition of using the job to grandstand and to slant the language of ballot measures in service of left-wing causes and special interests.

Instead, Jerry has out-Lockyered Lockyer, and in sleazy fashion. A recent Sacramento Bee story illustrated how Brown’s move to block basic state regulation of the financial practices of Indian casinos led to huge donations to his campaign.

Meanwhile, a Nexis hunt shows Jerry used to think government-run health care was a prerequisite of “social and economic justice.” This is what he said in March 1992 when running for president: “I believe the only health care system that makes any sense is a single-payer system, similar to what has been adopted in Canada.”

Is Jerry still in favor of “social and economic justice” for all?

Sure. If “social and economic justice” means doing whatever it takes to get elected governor.

Back to the state Senate’s push to have state bureaucrats oversee the health care that you and your family receive. Given how horribly the state government is run, having the state take over California’s health care industry is on the short list of the worst ideas in human history.

Yet two of the yes votes for this insanity came from San Diego-area Democrats Denise Ducheny and Christine Kehoe. Want to share your displeasure with this development? Call Ducheny’s Chula Vista office, (619) 409-7690, or her Sacramento office, (916) 651-4040. Kehoe’s numbers are (619) 645-3133 and (916) 651-4039.